Actions

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month – do you know the symptoms?

Posted: 5:30 AM, Nov 13, 2018

Updated:2018-11-13 15:58:18Z

By:
Alicia Smith

Pancreatic cancer is one of the nation’s deadliest cancers with a five-year survival rate of just nine percent.

November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. Pancreatic cancer is one of the nation’s deadliest cancers with a five-year survival rate of just 9 percent. It’s a disease that kills more people than breast cancer in the U.S.

Pancreatic cancer claimed the life of Aretha Franklin in August 2018 and Michigan Opera Theatre champion David Dichiera a month later in September.

Jerry Lawrence, 65, is grateful their families shared the diagnosis.

The Detroit resident learned he was facing pancreatic cancer in August 2017.

“[I] started having some tummy aches, pains in my stomach. I was like what is that?” Lawrence recalled.

He’d also lost a lot of weight and had recently been diagnosed with diabetes.

“We do need to catch this early. When you’re catching it so late, it just becomes so difficult to try and attack. And part of the reason for that is just because the symptoms are very vague,” explained Pancreatic Cancer Action Network volunteer Loredana Gianino.

But it is important to know those vague symptoms.

PANCREATIC CANCER SYMPTOMS

Abdominal pain or mid-back pain

Loss of appetite

Weight loss

Nausea

Jaundice

Change in stool

Recent onset diabetes

If you are experiencing one or more of these unexplained symptoms, see your doctor.